28 February 2017

We wanted to fit in another session at the Hunterian before it closes in May. The entire building is being redeveloped (it was redone only 30 years ago), only the facade left; when it reopens, the museum will be on the ground floor, rather than up the grand staircase. Perhaps the august Surgeons don't want hoi polloi invading "their" spaces as they visit the museum?

As usual, there were things in jars and bits of bones and surgical instruments to draw - unusually, there was a loud "soundscape", including the piercing and unstoppable sounds of a machine, accompanying a film or some sort, somehow. Not much fun for the people who have to work there every day - and can't turn the volume down.

Jo found a quiet place and tackled the thing she could see best - the pamphlet rack

26 February 2017

The van arrived mid-afternoon (we were grateful for the extra packing time). All that stuff, those big pieces of furniture, will fit into that little thing? The movers said they have 20 years' experience of doing this -

It's a puzzle how it will all fit in

Starting to fill up

Four strong men try to close the doors

Success!

Another van will be picking up the leftovers and taking them to storage in Glasgow -

The 8-legged bedstead was built by Tony; the office chair came, duringan office refurbishment, from my old job (so many memories, andso good that these items will go on to a new life

The house reveals its large rooms ...

The minimal kitchen/dining room

An unfortunate incident during the moving - Storm Doris slammed the window shut and there was an almighty crashing, tinkling noise -

24 February 2017

The view of "the lower mainland" of BC was taken by my sister on one of her local weekend hikes. The glacial fjord, first explored in 1792, is called Indian Arm; Vancouver, first settled in 1862, is in the distance towards the right, and beyond it are the mountains of southern Vancouver Island. The hill in the centre distance is Burnaby Mountain, at the top of which is Simon Fraser University, opened in 1965 - I was one of the 2,500 "charter students", walking through muddy parking lots (everyone drove to "school" in those days) to unfinished buildings ... ah, those were the days, and don't these photos bring it all back ...

10 months before opening -from the back: swimming pool, concourse with library to right,
academic quadrangle [seminar rooms] with lecture rooms and laboratories to its left

SFU 1965-6, on a day with few cars in the parking lots
(at right), no rain, and the North Shore mountains beyond

Most if not all student drove up to SFU -
the approach road revealed a latter-day Acropolis, but
don't be fooled, there was forest everywhere

A fascinating review of a new biography of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) appeared in the New Yorker in May 2016:

Paul Mariani’s excellent new book, “The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens” (Simon & Schuster), is a thrilling story of a mind, which emerges from a dispiriting story of a man. It’s hard to think of a more vivid illustration of T. S. Eliot’s principle of the separation between “the man who suffers and the mind which creates.” For most of his life, Stevens was an elaborately defended introvert in a three-piece suit, working as a Hartford insurance executive. He came slowly to a mastery of language, form, and style that revealed a mind like a solar system, with abstract ideas orbiting a radiant lyricism. ... He is certainly the quintessential American poet of the twentieth century, a doubting idealist who invested slight subjects (the weather, often) with oracular gravitas, and grand ones (death, frequently) with capering humor.

And later, among the biographical details:

Stevens took to composing poems on slips of paper in the morning while walking to his office, where his secretary typed them up. The results made him a regular and imposing presence in literary journals, starting in the nineteen-thirties.

Eventually there is a sad end:

Stevens continued to go to work each day into his seventies, even after surgery for a stomach obstruction revealed a metastasizing cancer. He was too august at the firm to be let go, but he was never popular there. His boss remarked, “Unless they told me he had a heart attack, I never would have known he had a heart.”

22 February 2017

It's surprising what turns up during a thorough clearout. These smallish, double-sided bags were made about 10 years ago and have so far resisted all attempts to move on...

... so why not send them into the world via a blog giveaway? If you'd like to enter, send me your details via the contact form in the sidebar. This is open for a week, till 28 February, to be drawn on 1 March.

I did enjoy making them from bits of this'n'that, starting with a long strip of fabric and collecting various "bits" to decorate it, and handles, then sewing the sides together and adding handles (as you do).

21 February 2017

"Embroidered tales and woven dreams" is a wonderful show of textiles from Central Asia and India - it's on till 25 March and is a nice quiet place to draw - not many visitors, which is unfortunate as the works on show are gorgeous.

My first choice was in a side room that might not be part of the exhibition, an early Islamic textile from Central Asia, 8th or 9th century, silk -

Reindeer with antlers surrounded by S motifs for protection

Inside the chequerboard, the squares are composed of several sections, almost like a log-cabin patchwork design. The colours have faded and what is now dark may have been green and blue, as well as the yellow and red and brown or perhaps black -

Yet again my good intentions to finish this off later in a colourful way came to naught -

A "Safavid chasuble in lampas" from 15h century Iran next caught my eye -

Worn sections were patched with more fabric, carefully pattern-matched

White silks as well as gold-colour, on that blue background - a complicated bit of weaving

I started with fine felt-tip pen and then switched to the freedom of pencil -

The crisp line of the pen is an invitation to lose oneself in ever more detail; it also can be used in a sort of hatching to represent the actual threads in the weaving. Perhaps it's a better idea to start with the pencil and add those hatched threads later with the felt-tip. Next time, maybe?

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are, any or every Tuesday? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.

7 May - V&A, medieval galleries

14 May - Horniman (gardens?)

21 May - Wallace Collection

28 May - Southwark Cathedral

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I had work in "A Letter in Mind" at the Oxo Gallery, September 2017 and again in 2018.